To the shock, horror, and dismay of onlookers around the world, the New START treaty expired on Thursday. U.N. secretary-general António Guterres called it "a grave moment for international peace and security" and lamented that, "for the first time in more than half a century, we face a world without any binding limits on the [American and Russian] strategic nuclear arsenals." Nuclear disarmament advocates and their media supporters fear the onset of an arms race and global thermonuclear war.
Even those with the sunniest dispositions can see much cause for concern in a world filled with nuclear weapons, but New START’s expiration should not add to these fears. This development affects peace-loving people around the world less than it does the Russian government.
Idealists have yearned for a world free of nukes since shortly after "Little Boy" devastated Hiroshima, and even the most sober-minded share their concerns. Neither Henry Kissinger nor George Shultz were wild-eyed dreamers, and yet in 2007 they called for "reversing reliance on nuclear weapons … and ultimately ending them as a threat to the world."
The ineradicable problem is that America’s enemies reply, "please, you go first." The New START treaty, which the Obama administration negotiated and the Biden administration extended, was astonishingly one-sided. During Donald Trump’s first term, then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo observed, "only 45 percent of Russia’s nuclear arsenal is subject to numerical limits ... meanwhile, that agreement restricts 92 percent of America’s arsenal."
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